Soda Jerk

Grant Hart though. RIP GBOL

Maybe your dad refused to take your CDs because who the hell has a CD player anymore?

I said "the back of (hour)" at work shortly after moving down south, and my boss looked at me like I'd just pissed on his kids.

Thanks, Aberdeen. Thaberdeen.

2 can work, if you're the Melvins, or GVSB. I am neither of those. I want 1, and I want them to be felt, but not necessarily heard. We have zero, and haven't jammed in about 6 months. I think it's dead.

I just play synth in my bedroom in the dark now. It's cool.

I moved to Somerset and also just had one band. We had 3 bass players quit in the space of about 2 months, one just completely disappeared. Deleted Facebook, never to be heard from again. He reminded me of Taco from The League. Aloof, but, too aloof. He's probably somewhere hugging a toilet seat right now.

Bands are stupid, and way too much hard work to get 3/4/5 humans in a room together all at the same time, and to continue doing that until you are un-shit enough to play a gig. Also, maintaining interest in playing the same songs repeatedly is tough. By the time you're anywhere near gig-ready, you're sick of them and playing them is joyless.

Bands are dumb.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is great. Not enough Rhys Darby in it.

Took me ages to realise where I knew the kid from Deadpool from, and it was that.

Ghostbusters. The 2016 one. Nowhere near as bad as all those precious boys crying about it supposedly ruining their childhood made it out to be. It was fun and silly. Kate McKinnon is great in it. I thought the cameos started to get a bit too cheap as it went on, but overall its a good watch.

I hope there's a sequel less reliant on throwbacks.

Is 'Barbaris' the weirdest bot so far?

They're like one of the neutrals in Futurama.

Beige alert.

I bought a Synth. I've never had one before. So I got one.

I too came out of mosh retirement for Propagandhi. Got kicked in the head by crowd surfers, one meathead tried some slam shit and got knocked over, never came back. Great times.

I do.

Final has been great to far. Don't really care for either team in it, but there just seems like there'd be something a bit iffy about an expansion team winning it in the first season with a bunch of rejects. That's a bit irrational, but I don't like the idea of it. They acquired a whole lot of bandwagon fans this year. The internet will be a bit unbearable if they win it, so I guess I'm sort of rooting for the Capitals, but I'm not really that bothered.

33 minutes ago, Lemonade said:

Brad Pitt was in it? 

And yeah agreed, the mid-credit sequence tied up the whole film AND had the biggest laugh.

I agree with everything you've said here. Once the trailers are done, doors locked. 

Brad Pitt was Vanisher:

He becomes momentarily un-invisible just before:

Agreed, they definitely got better when they went to a 4 piece. I saw them in April, and the new guitarist Sulynn totally shreds. She does some of the lead vocals on Fuck The Border now too. It's awesome.

12 minutes ago, Lemonade said:

Guardians of the Galaxy - Don't get the hype with this one at all. I liked the characters and there were some funny lines but overall I found it really boring and difficult to follow. 

2/5

 

Deadpool 2 - My favourite film since the last Deadpool. Pretty much every line is funny, the action is awesome and it's full of heart. Must-watch. Must stay and watch the scenes during the credits, which a bunch of people in the cinema walked out and missed. 

5/5

Same. Did they not wonder they the lights hadn't come back on, or why 90% of people weren't leaving?

It was great fun though. I preferred it slightly to the first. Loved the parachute scene.

I hate the cinema though. It reminds me why I usually wait for a film to come out on Bluray (last film I saw at a cinema was the first Deadpool). Film started at 2:45, and two lads come in late at 3:30! And obviously they sit two seats away from me, rustling of jackets, popcorn, bags, TALKING TO EACH OTHER. Die. Once the trailers are done, that should be it, you've missed it and you're not coming in, rather than disturb everyone else who has paid £12-odd to be there.

37 minutes ago, Dan G said:

I do quite like Todays Empires and Potemkin City Limits, but find both albums have about 40% that like you with Failed States I could take or leave. Both have some absolutely awesome songs on though (Back to the Motor League, A Speculative Fiction, Rock for Sustainable Capitalism to name a few). 

The last 3 albums I love from start to finish however... was initially disappointed with Victory Lap and then 5 listens in I was like "Oh NOW I get it" and love it. 

You're right with Supporting Caste though - just sublime and one of those genuinely life changing albums.

I skip a lot of Potemkin City Limits too (usually to the end, to Iteration. Probably my favourite if I was to choose just one individual Propagandhi track out of everything they've done.). I love Todays Empires front to back. I just wish it was recorded better. The guitar is so dry and the levels on the drums are so wobbly. The snare is smacking you in the face one second, then inaudible the next. I'm not normally a fan of remasters, but I'd love to hear them sort out Todays Empires.

First few songs of Victory Lap were instant for me. Then it got to the middle, and there's that song with the CLEAN GUITARS WTF?! And then it ends super strong again. But like you, after a few listens, it all just clicked, and now I love that song about the hunting trip, clean guitars and all. Great record.

6 minutes ago, Dan G said:

PROPAGANDHI - the albums Supporting Caste, Failed States & Victory Lap

Propagandhi are the best punk band of all time imho - I say that as someone who comes from a metal back ground too. Great songs, super technical but never unnecessarily flashy/wanky, and incredible lyrics. They are probably the only band other than Tool whose lyrics I REALLY make a point to listen to and analyse. 

I can take or leave Failed States. I'd swap it with Today's Empires, and that'd be their 3 essential records IMO.

Supporting Caste is just ridiculous though.

Sounds like I need to update my music library's genre tags from "Grind & Powerviolence" to "Teabagsy". The former is too wordy anyway.

58 minutes ago, Dan G said:

On top of that, from Aberdeen you can only really go South to find a big city to play - and even then there's only really Glasgow that is of major significance (Edinburgh's music scene/venues were nowhere near as good as you would expect from a city of nearly half a million, at least from my experience - and even though I'd say it's totally worth it, you aren't gonna make it from playing Dundee and Perth on a regular basis).  Compare this to being from (say) Manchester, you have the likes of Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, and Birmingham a 1-2 hour drive away!

This is what I noticed right away when I moved to Aberdeen, there is a significant disconnect, which I guess is down to location. As a band in Aberdeen, your only option the majority of the time is to play in Aberdeen, in a pool of venues that seemed to keep getting smaller. It's hard to maintain enthusiasm for that, and going further afield is time consuming and expensive, and gets in the way of jobs and whatnot. Networking is hard, as is gaining any real momentum. It's not impossible, but it's made much more difficult, and it's easy to give in because it doesn't feel worth it.

Growing up playing in bands and putting gigs on in West Yorkshire, options were limitless, because so many places are smooshed together. First gig I ever put on by myself in Leeds was a Monday night, 6 bands, 2 of them from Manchester, it ran until half 11, which is wild for a school night, but at that time of night, once you're on the M62, Manchester is 40 minutes away tops, and the trains run through the night due to Manchester Airport links. Small shitty towns across WY even had great scenes within them. Wakefield, Pontefract, Barnsley, and Doncaster were booming with young college bands in the early/mid 00's, and those places are total dives and very small, but everything is so connected. You could probably do a tour of WY playing different towns every night for a fortnight and not even take a day off work.

But the disconnect can only take so much of the blame. Now I'm down in Bristol, the scene here is pretty great, yet it also suffers from a bit of a disconnect. Closest place is Bath, but nothing happens there, musically. Bristol is sort of on it's own, at the other end of the country from London, not really on a typical touring route, but a great deal of big bands come to play here anyway, and the local scene is excellent. It's almost completely replaced Cardiff as being the south-west stop off for touring bands, as hardly any bands go to Cardiff now. There is a similar issue in Bristol with local government and stupidly wealthy property developers shitting on great venues (they've just shut down the Bierkeller which was awesome, they're trying to shut down The Thekla for some reason, even though it's no real threat to anyone as it's a moored boat, and The Fleece is under serious threat as it's now surrounded by mass property development) but for now it's still booming. Perhaps it benefits from having over double the population than Aberdeen, but there must be more to it than that?

16 minutes ago, Lemonade said:

I've read a few. My wife is a mega fan and has read them all multiple times. She always recommended reading them chronologically but the thing with Discworld is there are a few different story strands going on, all with their own jumping-off point. See diagram. 

You can start with any of the orange ones. I started with the Rincewind Novels. The Colour Of Magic can be a tough read, it's dry and full of long descriptive passages that can be hard to read. They do get a lot easier after that one. My wife loves the Witches Novels and thinks they're the best arc, so maybe consider that but she says just read them chronologically for maximum enjoyment. 

I'm alright with the long descriptive passages, but I find there's some really quick passages which seem to be the exact opposite, lacking context and with dialogue that seems a bit like gibberish, and it leaves me thinking "u wot m8?" so I go and re-read the previous couple of pages leading up to it to see if I've missed something important.

That flowchart is super helpful. I'd read that Mort and Guards, Guards are good starting places and two of the best, so I might skip to those and come back to Colour of Magic when I get a better understanding of the writing style. 

They're all worth listening to IMO. Even the crummy garage-y sounding stuff. Their body of work is quite diverse, but I'm a fan of it all, though I usually stick on 'Young and Good Looking' more often than not, as it's the first I heard, after hearing Everybody's Girl on Punk O Rama 3.

Speaking of Punk O Rama 3, listen to Punk O Rama 3 and hear the best NOFX song that was never on an album.

That breakdown at 1:58. Maaaan.

If that 90s skate punk thing was your jam, this doc is pretty fun viewing. Crummy quality, but there's some big hitters in this thing throughout, narrated by Tony Hawk.

Anyone into Discworld? I've been meaning to delve in for ages, but kept putting it off. I'd heard mixed things about whether to start at the start or dive in to the middle, as the first 2 or 3 apparently aren't so good. I started at the start anyway.

The Colour of Magic is making my head hurt. I keep having to re-read bits and I'm still left thinking "So what actually happened there?". Doing a quick Google seems to suggest it's generally a bit of a difficult read for many. Did anyone else struggle with it? And is it worth it? Or should I bin it and come back to it? If so, what's a better starting point?

57 minutes ago, Cabbage said:

Top work folks!  Going to wade my way through these.

What made me think I was missing out on a whole lot of music was Mondo Generator's Cocaine Rodeo album, I have nothing else like it in my collection but its one of those albums I'm always going back to.  I got the Dwarves Are Young and Good Looking album off the back of that but found it pretty forgettable.  

 

 

If you dig the sound of Mondo more than Dwarves, I'd guess you'd be more into noise rock rather than straight-up punk.

Maybe stuff like McLusky, Fight Amp, Unsane, Godstopper, early-Helmet, almost anything released by Amphetamine Reptile.

YES to War on Women.

1 hour ago, Adam Easy Wishes said:

Look at you always coming up with the goods!

It's grand, isn't it?

Their other records are well worth a listen too, but this new one is their most accomplished yet. Great band.

Leatherface - Mush.

Took a while to hit me did this record  - didn't like it at all in my teens, Stubbs' vocals take some getting used to, as he sounds like he gargles lighter fluid - but it was worth the persistence when it finally did.

My pick for Best Ever Punk LP probably changes on a daily basis, but Mush would be #1 more times than any other. As would NOFX - The Decline. Polarizing band, who have been largely irrelevant for nearly 20 years now - The Decline being their last GOOD record, and it came out in 1999, and they seem like a bunch of wankers generally, recently coming under fire for saying something shitty about the Vegas shooting, whilst playing in Vegas, idiots, one example off of a fairly lengthy rap sheet of being generally offensive, insensitive and privileged shitheads - but whatever you think about them, The Decline is a great record. Essential IMO. 

Of the more modern/recent stuff, one of my favourite records is The Flatliners - Cavalcade. It floors anything else they've released. They started as a ska band, now they've gone all soft rock, but this is somewhere in the middle, when they were neither of those things.

And here's a few more off the top of my head:

Hot Water Music - Fuel for the Hate Game
None More Black - File Under Black
Dillinger Four - Versus God
Nomeansno - Wrong
Mega City Four - Soulscraper
The Marked Men - Fix My Brain
Good Riddance - Symptoms of a Leveling Spirit
Naked Raygun - Understand?
The Dwarves - Are Young and Good Looking
Husker Du - Flip Your Wig
The Dauntless Elite - More Blood Bad News
Snuff - Snuff Said
Propagandhi - Todays Empires Tomorrows Ashes
Kid Dynamite - Shorter Faster Louder
Trial By Fire - Ringing In The Dawn
Gunmoll - Board of Rejection
Against Me! - As the Eternal Cowboy
Zeke - Death Alley/Dirty Sanchez/Kicked in the Teeth/Basically any of them, they're all great.

And anything by Descendents and ALL.

 

new Colour Me Wednesday LP is poptastic. Great melodies, killer harmonies. YEAH!

https://colourmewednesday.bandcamp.com/